Why Only the Blessed Virgin Mary?

[robdaddyf]

God was able to save Our Blessed Mother from Original Sin and this is called the “Immaculate Conception.” However, I wonder why it is that God would choose to save only Mary in this way? What I mean is, it seems like the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception seems to compromise our own need for a savior in Jesus Christ because God has “other ways” available to save us because he saved Mary “differently” than He saved us.

I am a new Catholic (going through RCIA now) and am converting from the Evangelical/Protestantism. I understand that Jesus “had to die” in order for us to have communion with the Father and to receive the Holy Spirit. However, it seems that God had other means of salvation available. Can you please help me out?

 

[bpbasilphx]

When you think about it, this is really a pointless question.

Actually, God is totally free.

He didn’t “have” to do anything. Neither did Jesus, who is God Incarnate.

This is the way He freely chose to make our salvation possible.

The only real question is: will we reject it or accept it?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

No, He saved Mary the same way He saved all of us. . .by dying for us.

The difference is purely ‘temporal’. He saved Mary BEFORE her conception.

Since God does not exist in time Himself, the only ‘difference’ occurred in the dimension of time as it appears to us.

Mary wasn’t saved differently, she was only saved ‘earliest’, at the very start of her earthly journey. Some of us are saved at baptism often very soon after birth, others later. . .but all in the same way, through Christ’s sacrifice.

 

[robdaddyf]

Pointless? Really? So your answer is simply…God can do whatever He wants…that’s it? Muslims believe this quite easily too.

What I mean is, how do we understand the necessity for the sacrificial death of Christ if there is/was another way available?

I was hoping for an answer from someone who might actually have an answer and not merely an critique of the question. Thank you.

 

[robdaddyf]

Thank you T.E. much appreciated! This is what I’m asking about…let me read your answer a few more times and I’ll follow up. Thank you!

 

[robdaddyf]

So Our Blessed Mother did need the death of Our Lord to be saved but His death was efficacious for her sooner? Or, she was preserved from Original Sin to “Welcome” her own savior but wasn’t, herself “fully saved” until his sacrificial death?

I know I’m not using technically accurate theological terms here but I’m doing the best with what I’ve got…am I even close?

 

[pigtown]

I really don’t know the answer but it makes sense, to me at least, that God chose Mary even before she was born to be the mother of Christ. Since she was to carry the Holy Child in her womb, she was probably pure and without original sin from the moment of her conception.

 

[ljubim]

I am by no means an apologist! But my thoughts are that just as God took vast steps to prepare the Jews as a people to be as ready for His Son as they could get, so he prepared a home worthy to raise Jesus. Because since He knew Mary would say ‘yes’ it was her free will to follow God…

And this is only for special cases (Mary, Jesus). Even if we could all be free from original sin it means so much that we come to God in spite of our shortcomings. So in a way it’s our cross as well as our blessing. Besides that, doesn’t Mary have enough sorrow after seeing her son crucified? Original sin plus all of this agony was too much, and so God in His mercy lessened her pain as well.

Welcome to the church!!!

 

[Secret_Square]

Jesus was Mary’s Savior just as much as He is ours. As a previous poster said, God simply allowed Mary to be saved retroactively since He is not bound by time.

Also, bear in mind that the closer a person is to Jesus the more holy they will be and the less sin they will have. Mary was closer to Jesus than any other person on earth, since she carried Him in her womb and raised him. His human nature, his very flesh and blood (the same Flesh and Blood we consume in the Eucharist) came from her. So doesn’t it stand to reason that she would be the holiest and most sinless person on earth besides Jesus Himself?

 

[CB_Catholic]

So Our Blessed Mother did need the death of Our Lord to be saved but His death was efficacious for her sooner? Or, she was preserved from Original Sin to “Welcome” her own savior but wasn’t, herself “fully saved” until his sacrificial death?

I know I’m not using technically accurate theological terms here but I’m doing the best with what I’ve got…am I even close?

No, Mary was fully saved at her conception. But this was a singular privilege afforded to her because of her unique role in salvation, as the Mother of the Lord. She was chosen from eternity for this privilege, and since God is not bound by time, Christ’s sacrificial death, which is an eternal event, could be applied to her from the moment of her conception by the will of God. This is how I have understood it.

We find this difficult to understand because we are bound by time and space, whereas God is eternally present, not bound by our human limitations. There is no “time” in eternity. Also, when we attend Mass, that is the reason Christ’s sacrifice is made present to us and is the same sacrifice as on Calvary.

And if you are still don’t understand all of this, don’t worry. We won’t fully understand all of this until we get there. We are limited creatures and have to live by faith.

 

[erictalbot2001]

The best way I have heard Mary’s salvation explained is as follows:
Imagine original sin as a hole. The average person walking along would fall into the hole. Jesus would reach into the hole and pull them out (save them). For Mary walking along, Jesus stopped her before she fell into the hole. He still saved her just in a different manor.

I hope this helps and good luck on your journey.

 

[TheDoctor]

I don’t know if you have seen this, but read the first section and see if it helps:

catholic.com/library/Immaculate_Conception_and_Assum.asp

 

[nordskoven]

Apocalypse 13:8 describes Christ as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, i.e., before time began. Time is relative, not absolute, and this is a uniquely Christian insight verified by science. We exist in time and eternity, and the Mass uniquely transports us into the eternal realm. The Virgin Mary was preserved from the Sin of Adam pre-veniently, pre-coming (veni=come). This was possible because the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world.

The Virgin Mary was the spouse of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit cannot forgive sin against His person unlike the Father and Son. Blessed Mother Mary had to be spotless, sinless. She is the Immaculate Conception, her angelic title being “Full of Grace” as only a wholly sinless being can be full of God’s grace. Marital unity, two becoming one, will be shared by the Church, the Bride of Christ, with the Bridegroom, upon His return. The Virgin Mary already shares this spousal unity with divinity that will be ours.

This is contradistinct from the Hindu belief that people melt into personhood-obliterating nirvana. We keep our personhood, we will be united intimately with Christ, two becoming one. The nature of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity is that He cannot tolerate sin against His person and could not tolerate spousal unity with any but one preserved from any stain of sin. This is God’s gift, as His elect are chosen by Him at His will alone. May we be counted among God’s elect and remain faithful and true.

The Immaculate Heart is the Virgin Mary’s faith response to the gift of God’s grace of the Immaculate Conception. The Virgin Mary used her attribute of sinlessness, a sinlessness just like that of Adam and the Woman before they sinned, to respond in loving obedience to God’s will though it meant the death of her Son, and horrible suffering as she is “pierced with a sword of sorrow that the thoughts of all may be revealed.” Yet all women, and their seed, are called to unite with the Virgin Mary and her Seed in crushing Lucifer’s head per Genesis 3:15. This we know because she is called by the Archangel Gabriel blessed “among” women not blessed “above” women as the prophet Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was called. This is an important and oft overlooked point.

All women and children are called to unite in conquering the Father of Lies and Murder. All women and their children are exalted in the Virgin Mary and Christ Jesus. All are called to emulate the Virgin Mary, whose purity of intent, whose Immaculate Heart, God wishes us to honor. At Fatima, Our Lady of the Rosary said God wished devotion to the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Heart to be established in the world. There in Portugal she fulfilled John’s Apocalypse Chapter 12, and there she relates God’s promise to convert Russia through her if and when the bishops, led by Peter, in their respective cathedrals, at one solemn, public time, consecrated Russia to her Immaculate Heart. The consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart was given as the “only” means to a period of peace, so far unfulfilled. Nonetheless, “pray the daily Rosary for peace” as she counseled. Free Rosary CD’s are available through the Mary Foundation online.

 

[TristanCross]

When you think about it, this is really a pointless question.

Actually, God is totally free.

He didn’t “have” to do anything. Neither did Jesus, who is God Incarnate.

This is the way He freely chose to make our salvation possible.

The only real question is: will we reject it or accept it?

Dude, you have some serious issues…

 

[Kilo1Mike21]

From the Luke E. Hart lessons…“Mary”

*6. Mary’s Immaculate Conception
Non-Catholics (and some Catholics) often confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. But the Virgin Birth refers to Christ’s being conceived in his mother Mary’s womb without sexual intercourse from a human father, while the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s being conceived in her mother Anna’s womb without Original Sin. It is the world, not the Church, that confuses sex with sin here!

“Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary,‘full of grace’ through God,134 was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses. . . . ‘The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin’135” (Pope Pius IX; C 491).

The dogma was not officially defined until 1854, for it took time for the Church to properly understand and define it after the question had been matured and examined over time. But its substance had been known and believed from the beginning since it was present from the beginning in the original “deposit of faith” like all dogmas, including the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the canon of the New Testament, all of which took centuries before they
were defined infallibly.The truth did not change with time; the Church’s awareness and understanding of it did.

By God’s grace Mary was not only immaculately conceived without “original sin” (which affects every human nature, except hers), but also preserved from all “actual sin” (committed sins) during her life.This total sinlessness of Mary, far from detracting in any way from Christ,was 1) wholly for Christ’s sake and 2) wholly from Christ’s power.

1. Mary’s glory was wholly for Christ, for his Incarnation:“To become the mother of the Savior, Mary ‘was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.’132 The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as ‘full of grace’133” (Lk 1:28; C 490). Because “of her vocation [to be Mother of God], it was necessary that she be wholly
   borne by God’s grace” (C 490). “ecause his Spirit had prepared her, the Father found the dwelling place where his Son and his Spirit could dwell among men” (C 721).“It was fitting that the mother of him in whom ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’102 [Col 2:9] should herself be ‘full of grace’” (C 722). It was for Christ’s saving action that Mary was kept holy.
   Mary needed Christ for her salvation from original sin. Christ’s redemptive act for her was like preventive medicine in contrast to his saving act for us which is more like curative medicine. It is like one person being saved from a disease by an inoculation to prevent it, and another person being saved from the same disease by an operation to cure it –
   by the same doctor.

Clear as mud now, right? *

 

[Eucharisted]

Grace is a free gift which God gives us through Christ, who died for us. Mary, from among all men, gave herself absolutely to God; because of this, He gave her the Immaculate Conception. The more we belong and are faithful to Him, the more graces He gives to us. It is not because we earn them but because He wishes to fill us all with as many graces as possible and those who love Him more shall receive more than those who love less. In brief, Mary is the Immaculate Conception because she is the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

[Le_Cracquere]

I have to admit: since the day someone explained the Immaculate Conception to me, it’s seemed inappropriate–almost precisely counter to certain things I’d thought about Christ.

I’d been reared with the assumption that Mary had as large a share of original sin as any other human, and I have to admit: this seemed not only fitting to me, but essential. My thinking was, a God who wouldn’t lower himself to be born of anything but a sinless vessel would scarcely lower Himself to rubbing elbows with tax collectors, thieves, and other losers. On the other hand, a God who’d think the likes of us worth saving, embracing, and dying for doesn’t seem like the type who’d balk at being born of an ordinary woman (ordinary in the ontological sense, though certainly of more than ordinary virtues). Hearing the Catholic doctrine made me wonder why such a God would go on to dirty His hands with us. And if He would, why He would flinch from Mary as she would have been sans the IC?

Sure, Christ was too good to touch sinful flesh. But He was too good for a lot of things that He did anyway. Has any thinker, Catholic or otherwise, addressed this seeming contradiction between His earthly Self-abnegation and His–forgive me–squeamishness in this particular case?

 

[chrisb]

I have to admit: since the day someone explained the Immaculate Conception to me, it’s seemed inappropriate–almost precisely counter to certain things I’d thought about Christ.

I’d been reared with the assumption that Mary had as large a share of original sin as any other human, and I have to admit: this seemed not only fitting to me, but essential. My thinking was, a God who wouldn’t lower himself to be born of anything but a sinless vessel would scarcely lower Himself to rubbing elbows with tax collectors, thieves, and other losers. On the other hand, a God who’d think the likes of us worth saving, embracing, and dying for doesn’t seem like the type who’d balk at being born of an ordinary woman (ordinary in the ontological sense, though certainly of more than ordinary virtues). Hearing the Catholic doctrine made me wonder why such a God would go on to dirty His hands with us. And if He would, why He would flinch from Mary as she would have been sans the IC?

Sure, Christ was too good to touch sinful flesh. But He was too good for a lot of things that He did anyway. Has any thinker, Catholic or otherwise, addressed this seeming contradiction between His earthly Self-abnegation and His–forgive me–squeamishness in this particular case?

In stead of attempting to make this a rational debate perhaps you should take the time to read the early Church Fathers concerning the nature of man, the Incarnation, and Our Lady, The Blessed Virgin Mary? Then, perhaps you would begin to see it from a different point of view and escape the presuppations which appear to confine you?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

It seems to me that you’re taking things too far and also out of context. Remember, the idea isn’t so much that God 'had to have" something just so but that if God deliberately chose to have something ‘just so’ that He did so for a reason, even if we didn’t see it.
Did God HAVE to have the Temple? Did He HAVE TO have the Ark of the Covenant?

God did not NEED the Temple nor the Ark. He could have chosen endless ‘others’. He could have existed in that ‘cloud’ forever, atop the hills of Jerusalem. He could have asked for a ‘plain wood box’ for the Ark. He could also have asked for a 100 story ‘Crystal Cathedral’ or an Ark studded with gems and lined with platinum.

So since He chose what He chose. . .and gave very specific directions. . .there was a good reason.

Now God chose Mary and He chose her as virgin (see the Old Testament) obviously for a good reason. There are a lot of other Scriptural parallels between Mary, Christ, and the Ark and the Temple etc. etc. So. . .whatever God chose to do with Mary was something of good and sufficient reason.

IF He chose her to be sinless to make the parallel of the OT more significant, there was reason. God knows that Mary is treated enough by our Protestant brethren as sinful and miserable, and God also knows that this carries over to the Protestant imperfect view of Jesus, and the communion of saints. Perhaps that is but ONE of the reasons He chose to make this humble woman born in the same manner as He had already created ONE human --Eve. (Remember, Eve was also created without sin.) In order to show that Man’s natural bend was NOT FOR SIN.

 

[Le_Cracquere]

In stead of attempting to make this a rational debate perhaps you should take the time to read the early Church Fathers concerning the nature of man, the Incarnation, and Our Lady, The Blessed Virgin Mary? Then, perhaps you would begin to see it from a different point of view and escape the presuppations which appear to confine you?

Well, I certainly need to wade through more of the Church Fathers, but my reactions were by and large in response to what I already knew of their arguments for the IC. And no one’s free of presuppositions, but the ideas that occurred to me seemed reasonable, whether they prove correct or not. I’d have said that a man would need a lot of confining presuppositions NOT to have those misgivings at least occur to him, but that’s just me.

And I’d really like to explore the Church Fathers and Catholic thought on the issue, but don’t want to reject “rational debate” in doing so–I thought that Catholics valued such debate, long as the debater was sincere and genuinely curious.